Free Other Paths to Glory by Anthony Price Page B

taken for granted a moment before that the French could suppress the news of some act of terrorism, so they both confidently assumed that they could do the same in England as it suited them. When Audley had done as much the night before he had been so battered and bemused by events that he had not seen further than his own interests, which seemed to be served by the suppression of the truth. But what had happened since -and what was happening now - was on a bigger scale. He knew it had nothing to do with him personally. He knew also what they would say if he asked them: not in the public interest, they would say.
    He was mixed up, and mixed up inextricably, in an official secret. And more than mixed up - he was like the worm swallowed by the bird in the Don Marquis poem, his free will and individuality fast dissolving in the secret’s powerful digestive juices: he was becoming part and parcel of the secret itself.
    After chivvying them into the car like a nanny with two wayward children, Audley showed no immediate sign of wanting to disembark when they had actually reached Elthingham; instead he sat immovable in the back seat with his nose buried in one of Butler’s reports, leaving them standing beside the vehicle uselessly.
    Not that the colonel seemed unduly put out by such cavalier treatment, or was at least no longer surprised by it. He stared round the little square with the air of a property developer, first examining the houses and shops on three of its sides and then homing in on the village war memorial at the entrance to the churchyard on the fourth side.
    He examined it in silence for a minute.
    ‘Typical,’ he observed to Mitchell.
    It certainly seemed typical, with its Sword of Sacrifice in bronze superimposed on the tall white cross, its list of names and regiments grouped year by year, first for the 1914-18 War, and then for the 1939-45 second round, and even with the familiar Laurence Binyon lines -
    They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We shall remember them.
    Hackneyed now, those sentiments were, though still moving. But only the first two lines were still true. Perhaps it would have been wiser to have chosen not these lines, which had in fact been written in 1914 when the war was hardly a month old, but the bitter truth which Siegfried Sassoon had foreseen in 1919 -
    Have you forgotten yet?…
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll
never forget.
    But that couldn’t be what Butler had meant, he decided.
    ‘Typical in what way?’
    ‘Numerical ratio,’ answered Butler shortly, pointing to the lists of names. ‘Count them up - the ‘14-‘18 ones are almost exactly three times the ‘39-‘45. It’s surprising how accurate that ratio is across the country.’
    Mitchell counted obediently, feeling somehow that his powers of observation were being put to the test. Well, he could maybe deal with that…
    ‘Yes, perhaps you’re right. And the graph of the annual loss is significant too, I’d guess.’
    Butler looked at him curiously.
    ‘What would you deduce from that?’
    Mitchell in turn pointed to the names.
    ‘Three dead in 1914, two in ‘15, eight in ‘ 16, nine in ‘17 and eight in ‘18 … and this is a good prosperous agricultural community - plenty of farms and a few big cities. A stable community, in fact.’
    ‘You mean yeomen make prime soldiers?’
    ‘Not exactly - I’m sure they do make good soldiers, but what I mean is that it shows there probably weren’t many men from these parts who chose to wear the red coat before the war.’
    ‘As regulars?’
    ‘That’s right.’ Mitchell realised too late that Butler must be a regular soldier, but he was too far committed to his thesis to draw back. ‘The army wasn’t considered a suitable career for a decent man - the non-commissioned part, that is.’
    Butler gave him an old-fashioned